FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12: FALL ART WALK
WHAT: Tour through the largest concentration of fine art galleries in the city at the Fall Art Walk in Georgetown’s charming Book Hill neighborhood. Expect the debut of new exhibitions at all galleries, as well as wine and light refreshments.
WHO: Nine galleries, including Addison/Ripley Fine Art, All We Art, Artist’s Proof, Cross MacKenzie, Maurine Littleton Gallery, Neptune Fine Art, Robert Brown Gallery, Susan Calloway Fine Arts, and Washington Printmakers Gallery.
WHY: Each gallery will open a new exhibition; contemporary art gallery Artist’s Proof will celebrate its grand opening at its new Wisconsin Avenue location (moved from Cady’s Alley, also in Georgetown).
WHEN & WHERE: 6-8 p.m., visit link for locations along 1500-1600 blocks of Wisconsin Avenue, NW in Georgetown.
COST: FREE; visit www.georgetowngalleries.com
Washington, D.C.’s most anticipated epicurean festival, the annual Taste of Georgetown, celebrates its 21st year on Saturday, September 13, 2014 from 12 noon-5pm with creative tastes from more than 35 of the neighborhood’s best restaurants, as well as an expansive Craft Beer and Wine Pavilion and live entertainment. For the first time in the event’s history, the Taste will move from Wisconsin Avenue to K Street, along the scenic Georgetown Waterfront. This longstanding event in Georgetown is hosted by the Georgetown BID and benefits the Georgetown Ministry Center’s services supporting the homeless. The event began 20 years ago by Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown and its former Rector David Bird and member Robert Egger, who went on to found DC Central Kitchen. The BID has been involved since 2004.
This year’s Taste of Georgetown entices attendees to Eat, Drink, Play with a new location, later hours, and experiences to keep the fun going. The only opportunity to taste one’s way through Georgetown in an afternoon, Taste of Georgetown 2014 will offer the opportunity to sample more than 70 signature dishes from more than 35 popular Georgetown dining spots—more than ever. For the second year, teams led by some of Georgetown’s hottest chefs will face off in the Georgetown Chef Showdown, testing their culinary skills during the Iron Chef-style Competition judged by D.C.’s top food experts and media.
The annual tasting festival will take advantage of its new Waterfront location to offer family-friendly entertainment hosted by Pinstripes that will include bocce ball courts, hula-hooping, face-painting and balloon-animal-making with help from a number of Georgetown’s historical attractions. Attendees are encouraged to relax, picnic-style, with their Tastes in the scenic Georgetown Waterfront Park. This year’s event will for the first time include Taste Marketplace, featuring Georgetown-based stores. The event will also feature a live music stage with bluegrass and country bands curated by Gypsy Sally’s. Following the event, attendees can keep the energy and deals going at After Taste Happy Hour events taking place at select restaurants throughout Georgetown.
Tickets are $5 for one tasting and $20 for five tastings (presale only), and can be purchased in advance online at the newly rebranded website, http://www.tasteofgeorgetown.
Getting There
Attendees can access the event via a number of public transportation options, including nearby Metro stations, the DC Circulator, MetroBus, and Capital Bikeshare. For more information on getting to Georgetown, visit http://www.georgetowndc.com/
There is ample parking in Georgetown, including a number of below-ground garages located near the Taste. To view parking garages, visit http://www.georgetowndc.com/
For more information and advanced ticket purchases, please visit www.TasteOfGeorgetown.com.
Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman’s will launch his debut novel at Kramer Books & Afterwords in D.C. on September 23, 6:30 pm in K Street Magazine. Known for most memorableSeinfeld-isms like “Yada Yada”, “sponge-worthy” and “double-dipping”, he is a graduate of the University of Maryland and wrote for theWashington Post before his engagement on Seinfeld throughout which he continued to write for top publications, including New York TimesMagazine, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Esquire as well as contributing to NPR’s “Day to Day” and “All Things Considered”.
It Won’t Always Be This Great is a literary debut that perfectly captures Peter’s satirical genius in a uniquely conceived crime story, set in East Coast suburbia, that offers timely social commentary about religion, marriage, and the politics of life. Distinguished advance praise includes:
“Anyone who writes for television gets frustrated that they can’t write like Peter Mehlman. Now he’s going to make novelists mad too. Mehlman’s writing style is completely unique, and creates an intimate bond between the narrator and the reader. You finish the book feeling as though you’ve made a new friend.” ––Academy award winning writer Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The Social Network)
“Peter Mehlman wrote a brilliantly funny, effortlessly insightful and unexpectedly moving book.” ––Academy award winning writer/directorSteven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich, Traffic)
“Peter has an uncanny knack for pin-pointing the absurdities of our petty bourgeoisie. Funny and astute and disarmingly humane.” ―Madeleine Brand, American broadcast journalist and radio personality
For more on Peter Mehlman, please visit: www.pmehlman.com.
Tuesday, September 23 at 7:00 pm
In Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, the co-founder of PayPal draws on his experience investing in hundreds of start-ups and shares what he has learned about how to build companies that create new things.
with Politics & Prose
The Mount Vernon Triangle Community Improvement District (MVT CID) announces “Color the K”, an inaugural art explosion event to be held at 5th and K Streets, NW on Saturday, September 27th. Designed for full community participation and interaction, the free activities will include creation of a temporary mural led by local artist Rose Jaffe, chalk art demonstrations and areas for kids and adults to participate, a hardware art show hosted by 5th Street Ace Hardware and more. Activities will be held alongside the Saturday morning Mount Vernon Triangle FRESHFARM Market from 10 am to 1 pm.
“Involving our community in artistic expression is one of the ways we can connect to each other and celebrate the diversity and vibrancy of the Mount Vernon Triangle community,” said MVT CID President, Claire Schaefer Oleksiak. “We look forward to the Color the K mural, led by Rose Jaffe, and the chalk art expression adding colorful imagery to the corner of 5th & K.”
Color the K joins Art4All DC, presented by Cultural Tourism DC, in celebrating art in the city.
David Sedaris has leveraged his sardonic wit and incisive social critiques to become one of America’s preeminent humor writers. Beginning with his wildly popular “Santaland Diaries,” the great skill with which Sedaris slices through cultural euphemisms and political correctness proves that he is a master of satire and one of the most observant writers addressing the human condition. He visits his D.C. “home away from home,” the Music Center at Strathmore, on Friday, October 17, 2014 at 8 p.m. Says the San Francisco Chronicle: “Sedaris belongs on any list of people writing in English at the moment who are revising our ideas about what’s funny.” For more information or to purchase tickets, call (301) 581-5100 or visit www.strathmore.org.
In addition to “Barrel Fever,” Sedaris is the author of “Holidays on Ice,” as well as collections of personal essays, “Naked,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” and his most recent book, “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” each of which became an immediate bestseller. The audio version of “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls” was a 56th Annual Grammy nominee for Best Spoken Word Album. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling collection of fables entitled “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary.”
Sedaris’s pieces appear regularly in The New Yorker and have twice been included in “The Best American Essays.” There are a total of seven million copies of his books in print and they have been translated into 25 languages.
He and his sister Amy Sedaris have collaborated under the name “The Talent Family” and have written half-a-dozen plays which have been produced at La Mama, Lincoln Center, and The Drama Department in New York City. These plays include “Stump the Host,” “Stitches,” “One Woman Shoe,” which received an Obie Award, “Incident at Cobbler’s Knob,” and “The Book of Liz,” which was published in book form by Dramatists Play Service.
David Sedaris’s original radio pieces can often be heard on This American Life. David Sedaris has been nominated for three Grammy awards for Best Spoken Word and Best Comedy Album. His most recent audio recording of new stories (recorded live) is “David Sedaris: Live for Your Listening Pleasure.”
A feature film adaptation of his story “C.O.G.” was released after a premier at the Sundance Film Festival (2013).
Life has been an endless series of adventures for Neil Patrick Harris. He has enthralled fans for nearly three decades in more than 100 wildly varied roles, ranging from the iconic Doogie Howser, M.D., and Barney Stinson to Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible and his recent, Tony Award-winning turn as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.Never one to limit himself, Harris is also a two-time Emmy host, four-time Tony host, an accomplished amateur magician, and a licensed taxidermist (one of those is not true). Exhausted yet? Neil’s not!
In addition to his busy work life, Neil is also raising very energetic twin three-year-olds with his husband, David Burtka. But how did an aspiring child actor from a tiny mountain town in New Mexico turn into an award-winning, jet-setting, A-list performer who is also the most prominent example of gay family life in America? By chance or by choice? Not only will NEIL PATRICK HARRIS: CHOOSE YOUR OWN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Crown Archetype; On Sale October 14, 2014) tell readers the whole story, Neil invites them to step into his shoes and roll the dice for him at decisive turning points throughout his life. In this affectionate homage to the Choose Your Own Adventure books he loved as a kid, he offers dozens of paths to choose from, some of which lead to the NPH we know and love, and others that end in the type of tragic demise that will be very familiar to fans of the original series. Neil Patrick Harris reinvents the celebrity memoir with an autobiography that puts YOU in charge of his life.
WHO: Neil Patrick Harris
WHAT: Book signing
WHEN: 7:30 PM
WHERE: Sixth & I
600 I Street Northwest
Noche de Pasión: The Tango Soirée
Saturday, November 8, 2014
Organization of American States
Join me, the members of The Washington Ballet’s Women’s Committee, Jeté Society and Latino Dance Fund Host Committee for Noche de Pasión: The Tango Soirée on Saturday, November 8, 2014. This inaugural event will benefit TWB’s scholarship programs and the Latino Dance Fund as well as celebrate TWB’s fall repertory program “Masterworks,” showcasing 5 Tangos by world-renowned choreographer, Hans van Manen, among other works.
Noche de Pasión: The Tango Soirée will take place at the stunning Organization of American States, which will be transformed into a sultry Buenos Aires Tango club, full of drama, passion and intrigue. At the VIP reception hosted by TWB’s Artistic Director Septime Webre and members of the diplomatic community, patrons will sip signature “Evita” champagne cocktails and have an opportunity to mix and mingle with dancers who have benefited from the Latino Dance Fund. Following the VIP reception, guests attending the main party will enjoy an exclusive performance by The Washington Ballet, sample the finest in South American wines and spirits, savor delectable Argentine-inspired cuisine, bid on “Super Silent Auction” items and be part of the best dance party to hit Washington, DC in decades. The event will bring together a dynamic group of hundreds of leaders across business, arts, politics, community and culture.
To purchase tickets, click here: http://www.washingtonballet.org/contribute/special-events/noche-de-pasion-the-tango-soiree_copy
Join CQ Roll Call and Hooks Book Events as they host John Bicknell for a book-signing event Wednesday, November 12th.
6 p.m. EST
LOCATION: Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital
Food & beverages will be served.
Complimentary copies of the book will be distributed on a first come first served basis.
America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation
About the book:
The presidential election of 1844 was one of the two or three most momentous elections in American history. Had Henry Clay won instead of James K. Polk, we’d be living in a very different country today. Polk’s victory cemented the westward expansion that brought Texas, California, and Oregon into the union. It also took place amid religious turmoil that included anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic violence, and the “Great Disappointment,” in which thousands of followers of an obscure preacher named William Miller believed Christ would return to earth in October 1844.
Author and journalist John Bicknell details even more compelling, interwoven events that occurred during this momentous year: the murder of Joseph Smith, the religious fermentation of the Second Great Awakening, John C. Frémont’s exploration of the West, Charles Goodyear’s patenting of vulcanized rubber, the near-death of President John Tyler in a freak naval explosion, and much more. All of these elements illustrate the competing visions of the American future—Democrats versus Whigs, Mormons versus Millerites, nativists versus Catholics, those who risked the venture westward versus those who stayed safely behind—and how Polk’s election cemented the vision of a continental nation.
About the author:
John Bicknell is the Executive Editor of @FCWnow in lives in Haymarket, VA. Follow on Twitter: @JohnBick1960
